Google is all downhill from here

A few years ago, Google was the savior of the internet with their powerful search and clean interface, such that it got its own verb named for it. Now, what Google used to be just doesn't exist anymore.

-Massive images now being incorporated in search results.

-I'm sick of seeing "Showing results for..." That is not what I fucking typed!

-The new image search runs 90% slower than the previous iteration for no reason and can't be disabled.

-Some weeks ago, I visited telescopes.com and lindt.com on a whim. I buy my Lindt at the grocery store and purchased my telescope elsewhere over a month ago but I'm still being harassed at every site that uses Google ads to visit these websites again. I've cleared my cookies and still can't escape.

I have to say I generally agree. (except the image reference in search results...)

I've performed a few searches recently and realized afterwards the searches were wrong because Google auto-corrected my criteria and corrupted it in the process, what I typed was exactly what I was searching for.

A few years ago, Google was the savior of the internet with their powerful search and clean interface, such that it got its own verb named for it. Now, what Google used to be just doesn't exist anymore.

Google has been an advertising company for many, many years. I find your outrage a little ridiculous, frankly.

A few years ago, Google was the savior of the internet with their powerful search and clean interface, such that it got its own verb named for it. Now, what Google used to be just doesn't exist anymore.

Google has been an advertising company for many, many years. I find your outrage a little ridiculous, frankly.

They used to be an advertising company, now they're a billion-dollar spammer.

Generally Google is still very damn useful.... except when trying to find product reviews. In this aspect I feel like the internet has regressed in the past six years, maybe I should renew some magazine subscriptions.

I look at what they've done beyond search and mail (and ads) and I just see an expanse of free products which represent expensive projects to get their name out and look like "great guys". I don't get it, honestly.

And while we're griping, what is with including search results for different spelling? I use particular spelling for a reason, to get particular results. Even acronyms are 'helpfully' expanded and included in the results, with no "Did you mean..." or other device to stop the autocorrection and only bring in results for what I typed.

I look at what they've done beyond search and mail (and ads) and I just see an expanse of free products which represent expensive projects to get their name out and look like "great guys". I don't get it, honestly.

It's pretty simple. it builds customer excitement and loyalty.

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And while we're griping, what is with including search results for different spelling?

The majority of people using mispelled words didn't do it intentionally. As such, the needs of the minority (you) were sacrificed to provide a better experience for the vast majority of customers.

Note, the numbers here aren't even close it's likely on the order of 1:1,000,000 or *worse* that a mispelling was intentional (not an exagerration). When you can benefit 99.9999999% of searches then yes, that's what you do.

But pretty much everything they do is "beta." You aren't doing anyone a favor by screwing them over.

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The majority of people using mispelled words didn't do it intentionally. As such, the needs of the minority (you) were sacrificed to provide a better experience for the vast majority of customers.

Note, the numbers here aren't even close it's likely on the order of 1:1,000,000 or *worse* that a mispelling was intentional (not an exagerration). When you can benefit 99.9999999% of searches then yes, that's what you do.

Give me a link to where Google posted this information. I've found the feature helpful 0.01% of the time, thus negating your numbers. (See? I can post useless bullshit too!) And while educated guessing, it's still just guessing. "Instant" search is a toggle and your actual query is a clickable link on the page, so clearly they're aware that it can be volatile. But for it to give you what you didn't search for by default is deceptive. It used to be optional.

THe large majority of customers don't care at all. "beta" or not is irrelevant. What matters is if the service provides them with value. If it does then that's enough.

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You aren't doing anyone a favor by screwing them over.

What are you referring to?

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The majority of people using mispelled words didn't do it intentionally. As such, the needs of the minority (you) were sacrificed to provide a better experience for the vast majority of customers.

Note, the numbers here aren't even close it's likely on the order of 1:1,000,000 or *worse* that a mispelling was intentional (not an exagerration). When you can benefit 99.9999999% of searches then yes, that's what you do.

Give me a link to where Google posted this information.

I believe it's in a tech talk somewhere. It's covered in the discussion of A/B testing and overall search quality.

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I've found the feature helpful 0.01% of the time, thus negating your numbers.

But you're not negating my numbers. Your personal preferences are irrelevant when discussing feature sets that impact hundreds of millions of users.

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And while educated guessing, it's still just guessing.

It's not guessing. Google drives search decisions through analytics.

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"Instant" search is a toggle and your actual query is a clickable link on the page, so clearly they're aware that it can be volatile.

Yes. And?

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But for it to give you what you didn't search for by default is deceptive.

How on earth is it deceptive? It's providing hte results that the majority of users want. That's why they came to google for *relevant* results for them.

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It used to be optional.

And? Actual analysis showed that it provided a *better* experience and made customers *more* satisfied. So it became the default.

Here's what i get when i don't have spell checking enabled and i mispell: seatac airprt

That's not helpful. I didn't want that.

If i really want to find "airprt" then google probably isn't the engine for me as that's not helpful for pretty much anyone who makes that mispelling. Given that, google normally will give me the following *good* result when making the above mistake:

(note that goog corrected *two* things here).

Yes. The one person who did want that ramada inn link is hurt by this, but who gives a crap. The vast majority of users have their search experience *measurably* improved.

How does google know this? The same way they know about any change they make to search results. They measure religiously. Things like:1) how many times does the user need to change the search query2) how many pages does the user need to go through3) how quickly does it take before a user jumps back from a site they've been linked to

and many many many other criteria that google uses to measure these things. Changes like these come with actual analytical data about how many search results are improved versus how many are harmed. If you don't like it, go to another search engine which doesn't do this (but which likely doesn't have as good quality and relevant results as google because they're not willing to actually do as good a job trying to figure out what their users want).

But you're not negating my numbers. Your personal preferences are irrelevant when discussing feature sets that impact hundreds of millions of users.

Again, show me the data.

And I'm not hundreds of millions of users. Millions of people like Lady Gaga, I don't. I don't want to see what other people want, I don't want to see what Google wants me to see, I want to see what I want.

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It's not guessing. Google drives search decisions through analytics.

That's what educated guessing is. If it were accurate, I wouldn't have a problem.

But you're not negating my numbers. Your personal preferences are irrelevant when discussing feature sets that impact hundreds of millions of users.

Again, show me the data.

Nah. I'm not going to waste my time hunting through all the tech talks for this. I provided information. If it's not something you're interested in in isolation, so be it.

(note: i've also participated in and collected data on improving Google's search results for a personal improvement that i put through. I've used hte system that G uses to directly measure and compare (using a variety of techniques) how the improves compare to whatever is currently the normal search. You may or may not know this, but at any given time google is testing out a few dozen different optimizations and features across the user base. Usually it's only rolled out to a few tens of thousands of users, but the results from that batch allow G to determine if the change is a net benefit or not. After that, features will then slowly roll out to larger and large groups across the world while still continually testing. This is very important as you may find that the feature you wrote is great in all countries except for Finland.

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And I'm not hundreds of millions of users.

Precisely. As such don't be surprised if Google makes decisions that you may not like. It's not ScottSwingoogle. It's not your personal search engine. It's a search engine used by hundreds of millions to do something like 75,000 searches per *second*. The majority is going to be catered to.

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Millions of people like Lady Gaga, I don't. I don't want to see what other people want, I don't want to see what Google wants me to see, I want to see what I want.

Then write your own search engine. Pay for it through yoru own means. If you use google you're going to have to accept that they have bigger fish to fry than "what is personally best for this single user".

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It's not guessing. Google drives search decisions through analytics.

That's what educated guessing is. If it were accurate, I wouldn't have a problem.

It is working right. It is using actual *data* to drive the decision of whether to correct or not. If correcting a search result provides better results (which can be measured) then they correct it.

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And in the very link you posted, the first result shows a corrected spelling.

Google likely autocorrected this initially*, but then discovered enough users having poorer search results that they stopped doing so.

* Or they may have never corrected it in the first place if there was enough data showing that this was something people normally search for.

You don't seem to realize that google pays a whole heck of a lot of attention to the search queries that people make and the behavior and actions they take based on them. They're constantly refining the results and *measuring* if they produce better results for people (i.e. more people finding the result they want on the first page (preferably in the view screen view of the reuslts, and ideally as the very first result). Spell correction gets them there.

And I'm not hundreds of millions of users. Millions of people like Lady Gaga, I don't. I don't want to see what other people want, I don't want to see what Google wants me to see, I want to see what I want.

Evidently Google is not the right tool for you, so you should take your search business elsewhere.

But the implicit assumption behind this thread is that Google is getting worse for at substantial proportion of the population (a thread with the contention that Google is getting worse for ScottSwing is not very interesting for most of us). So you need to show that they are hurting a significant proportion of their users more than that they are helping.

My beef with Google is now I have to watch an ad before pretty much every YouTube video. WTF Google? Also, when my wireless dies in the middle of a video and I refresh the page, I have to watch another ad. If I wanted to watch half ads, I'd watch network TV.

You don't seem to realize that google pays a whole heck of a lot of attention to the search queries that people make and the behavior and actions they take based on them. They're constantly refining the results and *measuring* if they produce better results for people (i.e. more people finding the result they want on the first page (preferably in the view screen view of the reuslts, and ideally as the very first result). Spell correction gets them there.

Just like Google, you are trying to rationalize too hard. You see, if I mispelled "seatac airprt" and Google gave me the wrong results and a friendly reminder "Did you mean: seatac airport", then I would think "of course, that's what I meant", click the link, and feel grateful to Google. But if I really wanted to search for "seatac airprt" and Google auto-corrected my query into something else, then I would get upset and would start feeling like breaking the neck of somebody at Google who imagines that he can read my thoughts although he has no idea. So I basically don't like this feature. You actually often get better results by searching for more obscure phrases related to what you want; auto-correction works against this strategy.

The same goes for Word's auto-correction feature, which is way too aggressive for my taste at its default setting. It's a bit different on a touchscreen phone with software keyboard; there I want auto-correction to be aggressive because I make so many mistakes.

My beef with Google is now I have to watch an ad before pretty much every YouTube video. WTF Google? Also, when my wireless dies in the middle of a video and I refresh the page, I have to watch another ad. If I wanted to watch half ads, I'd watch network TV.

Someone has to pay the bill for all that bandwidth they are burning so you can watch your cat falling in toilet videos.

Just like Google, you are trying to rationalize too hard. You see, if I mispelled "seatac airprt" and Google gave me the wrong results and a friendly reminder "Did you mean: seatac airport", then I would think "of course, that's what I meant", click the link, and feel grateful to Google. But if I really wanted to search for "seatac airprt" and Google auto-corrected my query into something else, then I would get upset and would start feeling like breaking the neck of somebody at Google who imagines that he can read my thoughts although he has no idea. So I basically don't like this feature. You actually often get better results by searching for more obscure phrases related to what you want; auto-correction works against this strategy.

My Google does exactly what you want. If you actually search for "seatac airprt", you get results. Sure, the first two are for the correct spelling, but below them you get the list with all of those that include the misspelt variant, of course including this thread now. Thanks for polluting the index folks, by the by.

Wait, you weren't using quotes? Why not? If you are searching for obscure misspelling AND you aren't quoting them, then you quite likely simply misspelt them - Google is behaving in any case in the absolutely optimal way.

Meta you seem to have a penchant for working for evil empires, will Apple be your next employer?

I'll let Meta call you out on it, but isn't this a blatant violation of the PG as a textbook ad-hom?

I wonder what you'll have to do this time to be let back in.

He didn't attack Metas argument; just Meta.

I agree with Meta's arguments about Google, and to be honest, his pro Microsoft's comments are also more right than wrong. Having worked at the top level of his profession gives me nothing but admiration for him, and his positions about the companies he has worked for carry far more weight than anyone here.

Meta you seem to have a penchant for working for evil empires, will Apple be your next employer?

edit: Ok this is meant as jest ^^^ see Apple in there? I meant to "do no evil" here.

ModerationThis is an adhom, and by now, you should know better. Do not let this happen again. Also,

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I'll add a smily so it's not taken as anything but a friendly jibe.

Smileys don't absolve you of meeting the PG.

Aph, you won't get your 5th and final OW here for a couple of reasons. Firstly, you've been relatively good for a while now, and secondly, if you were permabanned, I have no reason to believe you wouldn't come back under another account as you have at least 4 times in the past.

That being said, this is your last unofficial warning. You are admonished to be very careful with what you say, and to read your own posts using the strictest possible interpretation of the PGs before submitting your post.

All comments on this moderation must be directed to mods@arstechnica.com, any in-thread discussion will not be tolerated.

You don't seem to realize that google pays a whole heck of a lot of attention to the search queries that people make and the behavior and actions they take based on them. They're constantly refining the results and *measuring* if they produce better results for people (i.e. more people finding the result they want on the first page (preferably in the view screen view of the reuslts, and ideally as the very first result). Spell correction gets them there.

I understand how Google gets its results. But it's still an adaptive algorithm, which means it's just guessing, which means there are going to a be a whole lot of people not getting what they want.

I'll bet you read every one of your spam emails too. I'm sure that's really helpful to the people who want their penis enlarged and like to watch nude cam shows, offensive to the people who don't.

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But the implicit assumption behind this thread is that Google is getting worse for at substantial proportion of the population (a thread with the contention that Google is getting worse for ScottSwing is not very interesting for most of us). So you need to show that they are hurting a significant proportion of their users more than that they are helping.

I explained my case. And so far, only one of my points has even been addressed.

You don't seem to realize that google pays a whole heck of a lot of attention to the search queries that people make and the behavior and actions they take based on them. They're constantly refining the results and *measuring* if they produce better results for people (i.e. more people finding the result they want on the first page (preferably in the view screen view of the reuslts, and ideally as the very first result). Spell correction gets them there.

Just like Google, you are trying to rationalize too hard. You see, if I mispelled "seatac airprt" and Google gave me the wrong results and a friendly reminder "Did you mean: seatac airport", then I would think "of course, that's what I meant", click the link, and feel grateful to Google.

But that wastes my time by presenting me with results that are not helpful. What good is that for me as a customer?

If i want non helpful results then i'll use any other shitty search engine out there. I go to google because they actually manage to do a pretty good job at providing relevant results to me.

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But if I really wanted to search for "seatac airprt" and Google auto-corrected my query into something else, then I would get upset and would start feeling like breaking the neck of somebody at Google who imagines that he can read my thoughts although he has no idea.

Then you have serious problems. If you're so upset about google catering the vast majority of users and not you then you're going to need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and realize that that's how any product works. It's not your own personal search engine. It's a search engine for hundreds of millions of people. Google wants lots of people to use it and thus makes decisions that may not be optimal for other people. If you don't like that *then exercise your rights as a customer and find a better engine for you*.

Meta you seem to have a penchant for working for evil empires, will Apple be your next employer?

edit: Ok this is meant as jest ^^^ see Apple in there? I meant to "do no evil" here.

ModerationThis is an adhom, and by now, you should know better. Do not let this happen again. Also,

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I'll add a smily so it's not taken as anything but a friendly jibe.

Smileys don't absolve you of meeting the PG.

Aph, you won't get your 5th and final OW here for a couple of reasons. Firstly, you've been relatively good for a while now, and secondly, if you were permabanned, I have no reason to believe you wouldn't come back under another account as you have at least 4 times in the past.

That being said, this is your last unofficial warning. You are admonished to be very careful with what you say, and to read your own posts using the strictest possible interpretation of the PGs before submitting your post.

All comments on this moderation must be directed to mods@arstechnica.com, any in-thread discussion will not be tolerated.

I know commenting on moderatoin is not something we do, but i still wanted to address it. I'm ok with a friendly jibe *if it is just that*. When it comes to Aphelion, i can believe this was meant just as a little joke and wasn't meant to be insulting or an adhom. From other people though i might definitely consider it rude and an adhom attack.

I'd request that this not count as an OW against aphelion. My belief is that he can and will get OWs for his normal behavior otherwise.

Exactly ... reframing ad hominem this way renders the term meaningless. There was no argumentum. We'll have to simply call each other fucking tools now, which is boring

Not moderation but speaking as moderatorIt was a non-sequitur personal attack out of the blue. It wasn't the kind of adhom that gets an instant OW assigned, but it's a form of adhom. Anyhow, let's keep this thread to discussing Google, and any questions about adhoms to mods@.

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I'd request that this not count as an OW against aphelion. My belief is that he can and will get OWs for his normal behavior otherwise.

You don't seem to realize that google pays a whole heck of a lot of attention to the search queries that people make and the behavior and actions they take based on them. They're constantly refining the results and *measuring* if they produce better results for people (i.e. more people finding the result they want on the first page (preferably in the view screen view of the reuslts, and ideally as the very first result). Spell correction gets them there.

I understand how Google gets its results. But it's still an adaptive algorithm, which means it's just guessing, which means there are going to a be a whole lot of people not getting what they want.

Define "whole lot". Search query adaptation works on percentages. So yes, while 1% of people (and really it's a lot lot lot lot less) might be negatively affected, that's acceptable since *99%* of people get a substantial benefit from this.

The common case should not be negatively affected for the uncommon one.

Yes, you are right in that even one in one hundred thousand, or one in a million still produces a lot of people negatively affected. But that's acceptable. The needs and desires of the many absolutely outweigh those of hte few.

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I'll bet you read every one of your spam emails too. I'm sure that's really helpful to the people who want their penis enlarged and like to watch nude cam shows, offensive to the people who don't.

Um. You realize that spam blocking fits into my argument. It's an adaptive heuristic that may sometimes be incorrect, but is far better to have on by default than not.

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But the implicit assumption behind this thread is that Google is getting worse for at substantial proportion of the population (a thread with the contention that Google is getting worse for ScottSwing is not very interesting for most of us). So you need to show that they are hurting a significant proportion of their users more than that they are helping.

I explained my case. And so far, only one of my points has even been addressed.

I'll address what i can:

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-Massive images now being incorporated in search results.

You have an odd definition of 'massive'. This is what i see:

I don't see a problem with this. The results are highly relevant given that i only gave a single word. I get info from the news. I get the wikipedia data for it. I get nice images if i want to browse though. I can see live tweets about the topic. I'm not geting the problem.

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-I'm sick of seeing "Showing results for..." That is not what I fucking typed!

We've discussed this at length. If you want to search for what you precisely typed, then there are avenues for you to do just that. However, as this is the uncommon case google isn't optimized for you. It's hard to argue htat they're going *downhill* when they're giving better search results to the majority of queries.

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-The new image search runs 90% slower than the previous iteration for no reason and can't be disabled.

I have no idea what you're talking about. It's either instant or near instant for me. If i'm paging down the images are nearly always there. And, otherwise, i see gray boxes which pop in almost immediately. Infinite scroll is also a great way to handle image search as i'm in a tracking mode trying to find the one i want.

-Some weeks ago, I visited telescopes.com and lindt.com on a whim. I buy my Lindt at the grocery store and purchased my telescope elsewhere over a month ago but I'm still being harassed at every site that uses Google ads to visit these websites again. I've cleared my cookies and still can't escape.

Yes. Google is an Ad company. How do you think they *fund* the frigging search engine? You're not paying them (and indeed you're griping about a service you don't pay any money to), so how are they going to pay for the billions that it costs to run the servers, pay for the bandwidth, handle salaries, improve search quality, etc. etc. etc.

What amazes me is that you even notice ads. I don't even see them anymore (and browsing with Safari makes the experience even better with their 'Reader' view).

But the implicit assumption behind this thread is that Google is getting worse for at substantial proportion of the population (a thread with the contention that Google is getting worse for ScottSwing is not very interesting for most of us). So you need to show that they are hurting a significant proportion of their users more than that they are helping.

I explained my case.

No you didn't. Even now you're *still* arguing that *you* like google less, not that they're worse overall for their customer base. You haven't shown that google has actually gone downhill (as you've claimed). Furthermore, some of the things you've mentioned demonstrate how Google is doing *better* than it did in the past by providing more relevant search results to more users.

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Now: if you want to actually discuss ways that G has gone downhill, i'd say that one could talk about major mental lapses, like the Buzz gaffe. Not considering, and not planning for the absolutely certain issues people would have with privacy belies a *major* problem with Goog's approach to new product releases. That said, from what i've heard, Buzz shook them up pretty badly and they're creating an entire interwoven process into their product development system to make sure that privacy gaffes like that don't happen again. So, in this case, i would count that as a slip-up, but one that G is recovering from and working ot prevent in the future.

Meta you seem to have a penchant for working for evil empires, will Apple be your next employer?

I'll let Meta call you out on it, but isn't this a blatant violation of the PG as a textbook ad-hom?

I wonder what you'll have to do this time to be let back in.

It's only an ad hom if it has no baring on the topic at hand. As an old debater, I'd argue that, in this case, it isn't (assuming, of course, that the person does have a positive connection to the company being discussed).

It's only an ad hom if it has no baring on the topic at hand. As an old debater, I'd argue that, in this case, it isn't (assuming, of course, that the person does have a positive connection to the company being discussed).

That's not the case. If someone were to attack Meta because he work(s/ed) for MS/Google, that would likely fall into the instant-OW category. Not necessarily, but just likely.

If I put "seatac airprt" in Google I get a nice link ("Search instead for seatac airprt") that allows me to go after the original query. Is the extra click what we're talking about?

Yes. Scott thinks the vast majority of users should be inconvenienced to cater to the rare times when people intend to mispell things. I've pointed out that he can get the behavior he wants by default, and you've also mentioned that it only adds one click to do the search he actually prefers. However, for him, it's going downhill to require 99 people to do the extra click to do the right thing versus having 1 person do the extra click.